Thinking of buying a
new server for Exchange 2003 in the near future? Or are you thinking of
upgrading to Exchange 12 when it is released in 2007? Well, think a 64 bit processor. The Microsoft
Exchange Team Blog's page all but sets that requirement in stone, saying
"Exchange 12 will only be supported in production environments when it is
running on an x64 edition of Windows Server 2003." "Production environment" is the key
phrase that makes the move to 64 bit pretty much a lock. Check out the rest of
the blog entry for a buying guide for hardware running Exchange 2003 that can
upgrade to Exchange 12, and according to their hardware requirements, DON'T buy
a server with an Itanium chip even though it is 64-bit.So do you buy a 32-bit
server for Exchange 2003 alone or a 64-bit one that can eventually host
Exchange 12? If you go the 64-bit route, you also will need the 64-bit version
of Windows Server, as well. Oh, by the way, Microsoft suggests also going with
new multi-core processors, probably 2 of them, and being able to max out memory
to 16GB when you upgrade to Exchange 12.